Page 40 - September 21 2021 MAnfred Arnold Collection snuff bottles Bonhams NYC

426
AN INSIDE-PAINTED GLASS SNUFF BOTTLE
Ma Shaoxuan
Signed and dated wuxu year, corresponding to 1898
Painted on both main faces with an extract from the Lanting Preface
by Wang Xizhi, comprising one hundred and eleven characters
preceded by the seal, Shao on one side and followed by the date,
signature and seal xuan on the other; stopper.
2 1/2in (6.6cm) high

$8,000 - 12,000
戊戌年（1898） 馬少宣 玻璃内畫蘭亭序鼻煙壺

Provenance:
Susan Hacker
Robert Kleiner, The Susan Hacker Collection, 25 October 2000

Exhibited:
International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society Convention, Waldorf Astoria,
New York, 5-9 November 2013, no. 86

For an identically-inscribed and dated bottle formerly in the Charles V.
Swain Collection and now in the Adelina and Roberto Foti Collection,
see A & R Foti, Atomo Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Hong Kong,
2009, p. 27, no. 22, where the entire poem, an excerpt from ‘The
Prologue of the Orchid Pavilion’ by the eminent calligrapher Wang Xi
Zhi, is fully translated and parts read as follows:

‘in the ninth year of Yonghe (353 CE) on the festival of Gui Wei, at the
start of a spring dawn, we met at the Orchid Pavilion at Hui ji Mountain
to drink and chase away the evil spirits... Sages gathered amidst tall
mountains, lush trees, bamboo grooves near clear sparkling streams,
gentle breezes and observed the magnitude of the universe and the
riches of the earth...’

For further discussion of the subject of the Lanting Preface in Ma’s
output, see Ma Zhengsan, Inside-Painted Bottle Artist, Ma Shaoxuan
(1867-1939), Baltimore, 1997, pp. 77-98, in the chapter ‘Calligraphy
Works’. See Bonhams, Hong Kong, 28 November 2011, lot 49 for a
bottle dated to the same year but of different shape and format. See
also Sotheby’s, New York, The Hildegard Schonfeld Collection, 21
March 2013, lot 1088.

38 | BONHAMS